


Living

by phantisma



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-21
Updated: 2006-12-21
Packaged: 2017-11-13 11:59:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/503323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phantisma/pseuds/phantisma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the end of Not Fade Away, Angel and Spike find themselves alone in an alley with those who’ve died and dawn swiftly closing off their escape, and turn to one another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Living

It’s finally quiet. The air is thick with smoke, but the screaming and sounds of dying have faded. The ground is solid and still again, though the world seems to tilt and turn and twist as he tries to sit up.

There’s blood, copious amounts of blood. It’s in his hair, on his face, splashed across his clothes. There’s enough that he knows it isn’t all his. The pain in his body starts to make itself known…the pain of falling, fighting…the sword is still in his hand. The blade is coated in blood and he knows the smell of that blood.

It takes work to pull his legs out from under the mammoth carcass of the beast. A dragon, in the middle of LA. It still gives him pause. His legs shake even after he gets himself to standing, and he leans against the dead dragon, his eyes dragging over the back alley that had become the battlefield for his final battle.

Only it isn’t…not the last. He is still alive. If being a vampire meant being alive.

Angel’s eyes fall on the dead eyes of the young mortal man that had given his life to give the stronger of them a chance to keep fighting. Angel sank to his knees beside Gunn, one shaking hand closing his eyes. “I’m sorry.” The blow that had finally dropped the determined, but ultimately mortal Charles Gunn had been meant for Angel, and Gunn had thrown himself on top of Angel.

There’s a sound now, like metal against pavement and Angel wavers, leaning heavily on the sword. He doesn’t think he could swing it again, even if he had to. His eyes scan the alley again, but nothing moves. The sun is rising slowly, dragging the alley with light, chasing the shadows, pushing inevitably toward the back wall. He has to move, has to get to the dark.

He shakes his head. There isn’t any reason…not any more. Everyone is gone. Cordelia, Fred, Wesley, Gunn…his redemption is gone too…signed away, given up…and all he has left is the pain in his gut and an eternity to sharpen it.

Maybe it’s time to end it himself, to open his arms and embrace the end, embrace his destiny. The light is inching closer over the pavement and he has to squint now to see in the brightness. He thinks maybe he should face it on his feet, but isn’t sure they’ll hold him.

Angel shoves himself upright, using the sword for leverage. “Come on then, let’s finish it.”

There’s that sound again, metal scraping over the pavement…and laughter…crazy, befuddled laughter. Angel turns, away from the light, stumbles, distracted from his destiny by the thought that something other than him still lives in the alley.

He has to circle the dragon, using the carcass to balance on unsteady legs. He’s afraid. It seems ludicrous considering what he’s been through in the last 24 hours, but there’s something frightening in the sound, in the laughter…in the familiarity of it…in the notion that maybe he isn’t really alone after all.

“Spike?”

The younger vampire sits atop a pile of dead bodies…demons mostly judging from the stink…looking like he’d gone off the deep end. His foot swings idly at some ruined scrap of metal on the ground in front of him. He rolls his eyes and lifts a bottle of Jack he’d gotten from somewhere, taking a long drink from it before his eyes squint at Angel and he realizes he isn’t seeing things.

“Thought I was alone.” Spike says. “Thought…”

Angel nods. “Me too.”

“There all dead.” Spike waves his arms around him. “We’re all dead.”

Angel reaches for the bottle and nods again. “Yep.” He’d done this, killed his friends, brought down an apocalypse in the heart of Los Angeles...some Champion he’d turned out to be. “Sun’s coming.” He drank from the bottle, let the alcohol burn as it slipped down his throat.

Spike isn’t laughing anymore. His eyes rake over Angel. They’ve never been friends, not in the traditional sense. Yet here they stood, at the end of the world. Two vampires facing into their last sunrise side by side.

“Bloody good fight, mate.” Spike says finally, taking the bottle back.

Angel’s smile is sly as he nods. “Got to kill a dragon.”

They’re both watching the light creep toward them, inching closer together until their’ shoulders are brushing. The bottle passes back and forth. There’s a heat building that neither of them choose to recognize.

There’s the brush of hands as they pass the bottle and Angel sighs. “Look…Spike…”

Spike swipes the bottle and makes a sound that’s something like a dismissal. “No…I wanna go out like a man, not talking my sodding heart out.”

“I just want you to know, it meant a lot to me that you stayed.”

“Oh bloody hell, Angel.” Spike drinks from the bottle and shakes his head. “You never—Fuck this.”

He slams the bottle down and grabs Angel’s shirt, pulling him close and slamming their lips together. Angel pulls back. “Spike? What the fuck?”

“Shut up and fucking kiss me Angel. It’ll all be over in a minute.” They both glance aside at the light creeping toward them and Angel nods…understanding, maybe for the first time the acrimony that has always stood between them and the need to go out with something that at least pretends to be affection.

It’s hard, teeth and lips and both of them fighting for control, and then it just…works and Spike’s tongue is in Angel’s mouth and Angel’s hands are holding Spike’s face and there is fire and a sudden need…

For air.

They stop, pulling apart and gasping, dragging air into long unused lungs. “What?” Spike is the first to turn, waving his hands in the bright sunlight.

“You’re not on fire.” Angel says, looking confused.

Spike just looks at him, then jumps into Angel’s space and kisses him, nipping playfully at his lips. “Feel that?” He thumps on Angel’s chest. “Real boys. Both of us.”

“I don’t understand.” Angel’s hand slides up over his heart, then over Spike’s. “What just happened?”

“Does it matter? We’re human…mortal…all Shanshued and everything.”

“That’s it?”

“Are you daft?” Spike shakes his head. “Of course you are. Why do I even ask?” He yells, screaming into the bright morning sky. “I want to eat something. I want to dance.” He turns back to Angel. “I want to fuck.”

“What, now?” Angel snickers, his hand going back to his heart.

“Do you remember it Angel? The rush of blood, the way your heart pounds like it’s going to burst through your chest?” Spike stalks toward him and Angel might back up and away if he’d had anywhere to go, but his back is against the dragon and so he holds up his hands, but they’re suddenly full of Spike.

“Christ Spike…you’re mortal two minutes and that’s all you can think of?”

“Was thinking of it before I was mortal, Angel.” Spike says, pressing his body up against Angel’s. “Want it right here.” His hand grabs Angel through his pants, rubbing until Angel growls.

“Fine…you want it, Spike?”

Angel moves fast, even without vampire speed, turning them so that Spike is face first against the dragon, one hand holding him there, the other snaking around to unbutton his jeans. “You want it Spike?”

“Hell yes.” Spike is grinding his ass back against Angel and Angel hisses.

It takes him a minute to get himself free of his own pants with Spike’s bare ass pushing back into him, but Angel gets there and shoves himself into Spike’s ass. It’s been a long time since they’ve done this, and it won’t be gentle. Spike’s groan spurs Angel into motion, fucking into Spike as though they weren’t in an alley in public in broad daylight, draped over the belly of a dead dragon.

Any minute now he is going to wake up…or realize he’s already dead and this is just the last of his brain cells firing…but damn, Spike’s tight and squeezing him and his heart…his _heart_ is pounding against ribs not used to the beating…and he isn’t really breathing properly…and he’s alive, really alive…

He’s coming, like he hasn’t had sex in…well it **has** been a while, and he was dead at the time…and Spike is laughing and its good…really good…So good that Angel pulls out and drops to one knee as Spike turns around, swallowing Spike’s own hard cock with a chuckle that rumbles through Spike and brings a string of obscenities to his mouth.

It isn’t long before Spike is coming too, laughing and coming and Angel squints into the sun shining off pale skin and blond hair and thinks that just maybe it means something that it’s Spike who came through the whole thing with him…that somehow this is what living is supposed to be about.

He stood up, chuckling as Spike fumbles with his jeans and the sun is warm on his back. “I’m hungry. Let’s find something to eat…and a drink…to toast the fallen.”

“Sodding bleeding heart.”

“Yeah, but it’s beating.” Angel grabbed Spike’s hand and held it over his heart.

“You’re going to be impossible to live with now, aren’t you?”

“Who says I’m letting you live with me?”

“A bloke’s gotta live somewhere.”

“Not with me.”

“There’d be sex. Lots of sex.”

“I’ll think about it.”


End file.
